My research is in the areas of political psychology and public opinion. Using survey and experimental methods, I study the origins and consequences of people's political attitudes and beliefs.

In one ongoing line of work I examine the influence of political cues in the structuring of political attitudes. Why, for example, does opposition to abortion legality go with preference for curtailing the government's role in the economy? My evidence suggests that political cues indicating which stances are "conservative" and which are "liberal" play an important role is such attitude structuring. People who self-identify as conservative or liberal may respond to such cues in order to reach identity-consistent, and therefore emotionally pleasing, conclusions.

In other research I examine the extent of, and the reasons for, influences of basic psychological characteristics on political attitudes. My work in this area suggests that characteristics thought to underlie a broad-based conservatism -- such as religiosity, social conformity, and sensitivities to threat and disgust -- only directly underlie culturally conservative attitudes. Their relations with economic attitudes are far more complex, and they tend only to predict economic conservatism when the person is highly exposed to the cues of political discourse. Thus cues from discourse may cause politically engaged people to bring economic attitudes into conformity with their dispositionally rooted cultural attitudes.